Sexualized Saturdays: BDSM Universes in Fanfiction

It’s no secret at this point that I enjoy the kinkier side of things. BDSM has always been something that has interested me because there is something especially enjoyable about the power dynamics. And I enjoy seeing those dynamics in the fanfiction that I read, even when the fanfiction itself isn’t strictly BDSM.

There can be issues with power dynamics, of course; for example, most romance novels have some kind of power dynamics between the couple. Usually, the male holds a good portion of the power. This doesn’t necessarily mean the female love interest is docile in any way, although it is often the case in some novels. It’s been my experience that fandom likes when the less physically and/or socially powerful person is strong willed and intelligent and doesn’t take any crap from their more powerful counterpart. However, they usually still ultimately need their more powerful love interest. Even classics like Pride and Prejudice share this dynamic. Elizabeth doesn’t take Darcy’s shit, but ultimately he has more power in society than her, and it’s only with his help that Elizabeth’s family is able to escape a scandal that would have ruined them forever. The problem with these dynamics is that in mainstream pop culture, we largely see women in the less powerful role. And even in fanfiction, which usually focuses on queer relationships, the power dynamics still come off as heteronormative at times.

I suppose that one of the things that drew me to BDSM is that those power dynamics are out in the open and negotiated before the relationship begins. Rather than deal with societal understandings of who should be the dominant partner (men) and who should be the submissive (women), BDSM allows people to discuss what frankly all couples, whether kinky or vanilla, should be doing anyway. Since BDSM isn’t considered a quote-unquote “normal” part of society, there are fewer preconceived notions of how a relationship should be. But what if BDSM was the norm? Fanfiction often has a lot of alternate universes that I enjoy, but none moreso than AUs where BDSM is the norm. However, they bring with them a lot of interesting and problematic issues.

Sexualized Saturdays: BDSM in Fanfiction and Pop Culture

via care2

I am willing to bet that you have been in a fandom and listened to people debate about which characters are doms or subs. Basically, they are asking who, in a BDSM relationship, would be the dominant one and who would be the submissive one. You may have heard people also argue about who is a top and who is a bottom in m/m queer relationships, and while that is not the same as being a dom or a sub, the argument is usually similar. People tend to claim that the more dominant character would be a top and the more submissive or at least less sexually aggressive one would be on the bottom. While that is not necessarily the case, this is an argument I see in fandom a lot. It’s clear from my own experience in fandom that many people are at least kind of interested in the power dynamics of BDSM, even if they aren’t fully into the lifestyle or certain aspects of the BDSM community. However, many of the ideas about BDSM tend to be extremely stereotypical or riddled with misinformation.

Trigger warning for sex and sexual content below.

Sexualized Saturdays: Creating vs. Consuming Problematic Media: The Fifty Shades of Grey Effect

“It’s okay to enjoy problematic things!” This has become a rallying cry in fandom, and I’ve seen it crop up most recently amongst the Star Wars fans. Fandom wars have already flown into full swing shaming people who ship Kylo/Rey, and while it is admittedly a very problematic ship (and will be more so if they end up being related), it’s also people’s prerogative to ship what they want as long as they understand the canonical issues with their relationship. Each person who participates in a ship or a fandom has to weigh the good against the bad, and the final call—is this something I’m willing to accept with its flaws, or is this too much for me—is a deeply personal one.

Unfortunately, unlike fandom, where The Discourse rules all and people tend to err on the side of policing the problematic aspects of fanworks, the Powers That Be seem to have a mentality along the lines of “this sold well; people must want more of it” that precludes the possibility of refining the product in any meaningful way. Basically, when something problematic becomes popular, there’s such a rush to cash in on that popularity that, while fans are having discussions of how to improve the original work, those who create and propagate the media are popping out clone after issue-laden clone, replete with all the problems of the original. And nothing is quite as emblematic of this issue as the cultural phenomenon that is Fifty Shades of Grey.

Vaguely NSFW image and text below the cut.

If It Can Go Wrong, It Certainly Will in Gotham’s First Season

Well, Gotham is… it… it exists. When Gotham first premiered, I was excited beyond words. Like, wow, a Batman prequel that’s going to chronicle how both Batman and all his rogues came about! It has to be good! But whatever I was expecting, that isn’t what I got. Gotham’s first season was too long, tiring, and boring, and by the time the last episode came out it was a chore to watch. I certainly didn’t expect its first season to be perfect—all shows have problems when starting out—but I definitely didn’t expect it to be this bad. Spoilers and trigger warnings for sexual violence and graphic descriptions of violence below.

Web Crush Wednesdays: Fifty Shades of Understanding (Hopefully)

Two years after my first read-through, I realize I still have a complicated relationship with Fifty Shades of Grey. Perhaps it’s a bit embarrassing to say so, but I don’t think there’s any series of books I’ve devoted more time to than E.L. James’s train wreck of erotica, and still in no ways do I consider myself an expert on the lifestyles of Anastasia Steele and her wanna-be dom, Christian Grey. In fact, when finding the correct spelling of our heroine’s name just now, I landed on the Fifty Shades wiki, which I literally did not know existed until this moment. (Why we need a wiki for this, I have no idea.) It’s true that in some respects I appreciate the novels for making discussions of female sexuality and BDSM more accessible and acceptable to an audience, and have gotten many people to explore facets of their sexuality that otherwise would have gone unnoticed or ignored. However, this by no means excuses the series from its blatant framing of abusive relationships as part of the BDSM scene or as desirable, and it certainly doesn’t hide the fact that the misconceptions as perpetuated by Fifty Shades are, unfortunately, more likely to come up on a Google search than, say, the advice of people who know what they’re talking about.

While unwitting women and girls spend time looking for their Christian Grey and predatory men use this glamorized brand of abuse to draw in uninformed partners, many people are trying hard to expose James’s every creepy string of lies and romanticism woven between the books’ pages. While I have critiqued and sporked (see: critiquing in a humorous fashion) a fic or two in my time, Fifty Shades is a task too daunting for me to take on myself. Luckily, thanks to some very devoted folks online, I don’t have to.

Oh, My Pop Culture Religion: Between Prudishness & Abuse: Feminists, Christians, & Fifty Shades of Grey

Being a Christian feminist, I navigate a minefield of issues. I often find myself in this weird state where I’m not really accepted in either circle, so it makes life difficult. On the rare occasion that Christians and feminists agree on something, you think I’d be the first to start cheering. However, it seems sometimes even when these two groups agree with each other, they really don’t. Case in point: the recent and growing popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey, the Twilight fanfic turned popular movie franchise. While many people, both Christian and feminist, hated the book, the movie is sure to bring the story to a wider audience, causing both groups to worry about how this popular piece of geek culture is going to affect our society.

Even though both groups agree that Fifty Shades is a problem, many Christians are now using it both as an opportunity to kink-shame and slut-shame, and as an attempt to bring back archaic and sexist notions of chivalry.

Both the pictures in this post and the frank discussion of BDSM are NSFW.

Sexualized Saturdays: Tops and Bottoms

“I know fanfic authors, well, I know what they like.

[WARNING: IRENE ADLER MEANS ADULT CONTENT AHEAD]

One of the things that really bothers me in fanfiction is something as simple as arguing over who is the “top” and “bottom” in a pairing. If magically there are somehow no arguments about who’s on top, then I notice that one person in a pairing is constantly seen as the bottom because they are “weaker and more stereotypically feminine.”

I should stress that I feel this is mostly a slash fanfiction problem, but het pairings and femslash pairings are not exempt in any way. Het pairings simply delegate the women to the role of a “bottom,” but femslash tends to avoid top and bottom debates, though there are some exceptions, such as if a female character tends to be more “stereotypically masculine,” then she will more than likely be on “top.”

Have you seen the key factor here? Hint: it’s a penis.